ile away from the fort, to fetch the cows home
to be milked and secured for the night. The glades, which were well set
in grass and thickly mottled over with patches of white clover, both the
spontaneous products of the soil, were separated from each other by
narrow belts of forest growth, converging, for the most part, toward the
base of a grass-coated, tree-crowned, exceedingly pleasant-looking hill,
of sufficient height to command a fine view of the neighboring country.
To the top of this hill, no matter where the cattle might be, Bertha
always climbed before quitting the spot.

I would not be understood as meaning that backwoods-man's daughter did
this because she was a great admirer of fine landscapes. Intellectually,
she may have been almost unconscious of their beauty; and yet it made
her happy simply to sit up there for a half hour every evening and let
the gladness in her young heart go forth to mingle itself with gladness
of nature around her. The universal mother and friend, thus looked
directly down upon, seems to assume a smile more directly responsive to
the thoughts and emotions in the beholder's mind than when viewed from
the general level. The little girl may have had but the faintest
intimation of such an interchange; yet, depend upon it, had it not
existed, she never would have troubled herself to clamber up the hill,
excepting when the cattle were up there and too perverse to come down at
her gentle call.

On the evening following Sprigg's mysterious reappearance, Bertha, on
going to the glades and climbing to the top of her favorite hill, found
there an altogether unfamiliar object, the sight whereof made her two
blue eyes dilate with wonder and delight. Beside the moss-grown tree
trunk, where she always sat when up there, stood a small but exceedingly
luxuriant bush, which must have been the growth of a single day, as she
had not seen it there on the previous evening, nor the like of it in all
her life. Upon the bush, besides foliage of vivid greenness, grew in in
the greatest profusion a large flower of marvelous beauty, both as to
its shape, so heart-like, and to its color, so blood-like. But what more
especially still distinguished the flower was its perfume, which, though
powerful enough to be perceptible all over the hill, was yet too
delicate, too lily-like to be easily referred to a plant of such
tropical richness, which had more the appearance of bleeding than of
blooming. It was a sweetne