to the most familiar
objects such a strange, ghostly charm. After they had gone a mile into
the forest, she could see through the black spruces silver gleams of the
sea, and hear, amid the whirr and sway of the pine-tops, the dash of the
ever restless tide which pushed up the long cove. It was at the full, as
she could discern with a rapid glance of her practiced eye, expertly
versed in the knowledge of every change of the solitary nature around.

And now the party began to plunge straight down the rocky ledge of the
Devil's Back, on which they had been walking hitherto, into the deep
ravine where lay the cove. It was a scrambling, precipitous way, over
perpendicular walls of rock, whose crevices furnished anchoring-places
for grand old hemlocks or silver-birches, and whose rough sides,
leathery with black flaps of lichen, were all tangled and interlaced
with thick netted bushes. The men plunged down laughing, shouting, and
swearing at their occasional missteps, and silently as moonbeam or
thistledown the light-footed shadow went down after them.

She suddenly paused behind a pile of rock, as, through an opening
between two great spruces, the sea gleamed out like a sheet of
looking-glass set in a black frame. And here the child saw a small
vessel swinging at anchor, with the moonlight full on its slack sails,
and she could hear the gentle gurgle and lick of the green-tongued waves
as they dashed under it toward the rocky shore.

Mara stopped with a beating heart as she saw the company making for the
schooner. The tide is high; will they go on board and sail away with him
where she cannot follow? What could she do? In an ecstasy of fear she
kneeled down and asked God not to let him go,--to give her at least one
more chance to save him.

For the pure and pious child had heard enough of the words of these men,
as she walked behind them, to fill her with horror. She had never before
heard an oath, but there came back from these men coarse, brutal tones
and words of blasphemy that froze her blood with horror. And Moses was
going with them! She felt somehow as if they must be a company of fiends
bearing him to his ruin.

For some time she kneeled there watching behind the rock, while Moses
and his companions went on board the little schooner. She had no
feeling of horror at the loneliness of her own situation, for her
solitary life had made every woodland thing dear and familiar to her.
She was cowering down, on a loose