o watch for
daily, and as it were to feed upon them, with a glowing heart. The first
time I stood on the wooded crest, and found no change from yesterday, I
could hardly believe my eyes, or thought at least that it must be some
great mistake on the part of my love. However, even that oppressed me
with a heavy heart, which grew heavier, as I found from day to day no
token.

Three times I went and waited long at the bottom of the valley, where
now the stream was brown and angry with the rains of autumn, and the
weeping trees hung leafless. But though I waited at every hour of day,
and far into the night, no light footstep came to meet me, no sweet
voice was in the air; all was lonely, drear, and drenched with sodden
desolation. It seemed as if my love was dead, and the winds were at her
funeral.

Once I sought far up the valley, where I had never been before, even
beyond the copse where Lorna had found and lost her brave young cousin.
Following up the river channel, in shelter of the evening fog, I gained
a corner within stone's throw of the last outlying cot. This was a
gloomy, low, square house, without any light in the windows, roughly
built of wood and stone, as I saw when I drew nearer. For knowing it
to be Carver's dwelling (or at least suspecting so, from some words of
Lorna's), I was led by curiosity, and perhaps by jealousy, to have a
closer look at it. Therefore, I crept up the stream, losing half my
sense of fear, by reason of anxiety. And in truth there was not much to
fear, the sky being now too dark for even a shooter of wild fowl to make
good aim. And nothing else but guns could hurt me, as in the pride of my
strength I thought, and in my skill of single-stick.

Nevertheless, I went warily, being now almost among this nest of
cockatrices. The back of Carver's house abutted on the waves of the
rushing stream; and seeing a loop-hole, vacant for muskets, I looked in,
but all was quiet. So far as I could judge by listening, there was no
one now inside, and my heart for a moment leaped with joy, for I
had feared to find Lorna there. Then I took a careful survey of the
dwelling, and its windows, and its door, and aspect, as if I had been
a robber meaning to make privy entrance. It was well for me that I did
this, as you will find hereafter.

Having impressed upon my mind (a slow but, perhaps retentive mind), all
the bearings of the place, and all its opportunities, and even the
curve of the stream along it,