"

"He'll be a good while about it -- if he takes one stick at a
time -- and we ain't nigh home, neither."

Elizabeth came to a stand, and finally turned in another
direction, homewards. But she broke from the path then, and
took up the quest in earnest, leading her panting followers
over rocks and moss-beds and fallen cedars and tangled vines
and undergrowth, which in many places hindered their way. She
found trees enough at last, and near enough home; but both she
and her companions had had tree-hunting to their satisfaction.
Elizabeth commissioned Anderese to find fuel in another way;
and herself in some disgust at her new charge, returned to her
rock and her bible. She tried to go through with the third
chapter of Matthew; and her eye did go over it, though often
swimming in tears. But that was the end of her studies at that
time. Sorrow claimed the rest of the day for its own, and held
the whole ground. Her household and its perplexities -- her
bible and its teachings -- her ignorance and her necessities, --
faded away from view; and instead thereof rose up the lost
father, the lost home, and the lost friend yet dearer than
all.

"What's become of Miss Haye?" whispered Mrs. Nettley late in
the evening.

"Don' know," answered Clam. "Melted away -- all that can melt,
and shaken down -- all that can shake, of her. That ain't all,
so I s'pose there's somethin' left."

"Poor thing! -- no wonder she takes it hard," said the good
lady.

"No," said Clam, -- she never did take nothin' easy."

"Has she been crying all the afternoon?"

"Don' know," said Clam; "the eye of curiosity ain't invited;
but she don't take that easy neither, when she's about it.
I've seen her cry -- once; she'd do a year o' your crying in
half an hour."

CHAPTER XIII.

O Land of Quiet! to thy shore the surf
Of the perturbed Present rolls and sleeps;
Our storms breathe soft as June upon thy turf,
And lure out blossoms.
LOWELL.

They were days of violent grief which for a little while
followed each other. Elizabeth spent them out of doors; in the
woods, on the rocks, by the water's edge. She would take her
bible out with her, and sometimes try to read a little; but a
very few words would generally touch some spring which set her
off upon a torrent of sorrow. Pleasant things past or out of
her reach, the present time a blank, the future worse than a
blank, -- she knew nothing else. She did often in her distress
repeat the pray