What kind of things?"

"A pack of falsehoods. He says she has no heart. She has promised always
to regard him as a friend: it's more than I will, hang him!"

"Poor fellow!" said I; and now, as I write, I can only repeat,
considering what a hope was here broken, Poor fellow!

* * * * *

_August 23d._--I have been lounging about all day, thinking of it,
dreaming of it, spooning over it, as they say. This is a decided waste
of time. I think, accordingly, the best thing for me to do is, to sit
down and lay the ghost by writing out my story.

On Thursday evening Miss Blunt happened to intimate that she had a
holiday on the morrow, it being the birthday of the lady in whose
establishment she teaches.

"There is to be a tea-party at four o'clock in the afternoon for the
resident pupils and teachers," said Miss Esther. "Tea at four! what do
you think of that? And then there is to be a speech-making by the
smartest young lady. As my services are not required, I propose to be
absent. Suppose, father, you take us out in your boat. Will you come,
Mr. Locksley? We shall have a nice little picnic. Let us go over to old
Fort Pudding, across the bay. We will take our dinner with us, and send
Dorothy to spend the day with her sister, and put the house-key in our
pocket, and not come home till we please."

I warmly espoused the project, and it was accordingly carried into
execution the next morning, when, at about ten o'clock, we pushed off
from our little wharf at the garden-foot. It was a perfect summer's day:
I can say no more for it. We made a quiet run over to the point of our
destination. I shall never forget the wondrous stillness which brooded
over earth and water, as we weighed anchor in the lee of my old
friend,--or old enemy,--the ruined fort. The deep, translucent water
reposed at the base of the warm sunlit cliff like a great basin of
glass, which I half expected to hear shiver and crack as our keel
ploughed through it. And how color and sound stood out in the
transparent air! How audibly the little ripples on the beach whispered
to the open sky! How our irreverent voices seemed to jar upon the
privacy of the little cove! The mossy rocks doubled themselves without a
flaw in the clear, dark water. The gleaming white beach lay fringed with
its deep deposits of odorous sea-weed, gleaming black. The steep,
straggling sides of the cliffs raised aloft their rugged angles against
the burning b