nds, and
found more chinks in the Constitution: bigger chinks, for the Things were
bigger, and they stole more chestnuts. But I am getting far ahead of my
love-story--and of my book.

The reader is warned that this first love-story will, in a few chapters,
come to an end: and not to a happy end--otherwise there would be no book.
Lest he should throw the book away when he arrives at this page, it is
only fair to tell him that there is another and a much longer love story
later on, if he will only continue to read, in which, it is hoped, he may
not be disappointed.

The hills seem to leap up against the sky as I describe that region where
Cynthia Ware was born, and the very old country names help to summon up
the picture. Coniston Mountain, called by some the Blue Mountain, clad in
Hercynian forests, ten good miles in length, north and south, with its
notch road that winds over the saddle behind the withers of it. Coniston
Water, that oozes out from under the loam in a hundred places, on the
eastern slope, gathers into a rushing stream to cleave the very granite,
flows southward around the south end of Coniston Mountain, and having
turned the mills at Brampton, idles through meadows westward in its own
green valley until it comes to Harwich, where it works again and tumbles
into a river. Brampton and Harwich are rivals, but Coniston Water gives
of its power impartially to each. From the little farm clearings on the
western slope of Coniston Mountain you can sweep the broad valley of a
certain broad river where grew (and grow still) the giant pines that gave
many a mast to King George's navy as tribute for the land. And beyond
that river rises beautiful Farewell Mountain of many colors, now
sapphire, now amethyst, its crest rimmed about at evening with saffron
flame; and, beyond Farewell, the emerald billows of the western peaks
catching the level light. A dozen little brooks are born high among the
western spruces on Coniston to score deep, cool valleys in their way
through Clovelly township to the broad music of the water and fresh
river-valleys full of the music of the water and fresh with the odor of
the ferns.

To this day the railroad has not reached Coniston Village--nay, nor
Coniston Flat, four miles nearer Brampton. The village lies on its own
little shelf under the forest-clad slope of the mountain, and in the
midst of its dozen houses is the green triangle where the militia used to
drill on June days. At one