ut she gave me no time. She was either so animated,
so thoroughly agreeable and entertaining, that I felt only pride at the
part I held in her, or else she gave premonitory symptoms of a return to
the drill, which always suggested to me the absolute need of physical
exercise, and ended in a walk or horseback ride,--in her company, of
course. At last I really was so far restored, that my plea of being so
much stronger, more at rest, near her, (which was true, for her oral
teaching was not unmingled with subtile fascination,) failed to call
forth the genial, loving smile. She began to pine for more honors,
greater development, more earnest life. Strange! I, the former
blacksmith, was a very flower, lulled in the _dolce far niente_ of
summer air and sunshine, beside her more vigorous intellectual nature.
Sensation and emotion were scarcely expressed by me before they were
taken up into the arctic regions of her brain, and looked coldly on
their former selves.

I resolved one day, by a grand effort, to leave the next. As I had not
seen Annie since the walk with her to Hillside, and had declined Mrs.
Lang's offer to invite her to the house that I might see more of her, on
the ground of fatigue and occupation in the evening with Miss Darry, it
became incumbent upon me to go to the cottage for a farewell.

It looked very quiet, as I approached. The blinds were closed, as in
summer, and there was no one in the kitchen.

Hearing footsteps in the sitting-room, however, I entered, and met Miss
Dinsmore with her finger on her lips and an agitated expression on her
face.

"For mercy's sake, don't come here now, Sandy Allen! You might have done
some good by coming before; but now, poor, sweet lamb, she's very sick,
and Miss Bray's most distracted. You're the very last person she'd care
to see. You'd better go out just the very same quiet way you come in."

"Annie sick? How? where? when?" I asked, breathlessly.

Miss Dinsmore seized me by the shoulder, and pushing me, not too gently,
into the kitchen, closed the door, and stood beside me.

"She's got brain-fever. I guess she caught cold the other day, when she
went up to Hillside. She a'n't been out since, and she's been
wanderin',--somethin' about not wantin' to go into a meader."

"I shall go up and see her," I answered, turning again to the door.

"Indeed you won't, Sandy Allen! You'll set her wilder than ever again."

"I shall go up and see her," I repeated, firmly; and,