t I can't. I don't care any thing about him."
And she looked at the Parson with the air of a culprit who has confessed a
terrible misdemeanor.

"Ah," he replied, "you have not then reached the point in the journey at
which one sees him. It is only a question of time: one comes of a sudden
into the presence of Wordsworth, as a traveller finds some day, upon a
well-known road, a grand cathedral, into which he turns aside and
worships, and wonders how it happens that he never before saw it. You will
tell me some day that this has happened to you. It is only a question of
time."

Just as Parson Dorrance pronounced the last words, they were echoed by a
laughing party who had come in search of him. "Yes, yes, only a question
of time," they said; "and it is our time now, Parson. You must come with
us. No monopoly of the Parson allowed, Mrs. Hunter," and they carried him
off, joining hands around him and singing the old college song, "Gaudeamus
igitur."

Stephen, who had joined eagerly in the proposal to go in search of the
Parson, remained behind, and made a sign to Mercy to stay with him.
Sitting down by her side, he said gloomily,--

"What were you talking about when we came up? Your face looked as if you
were listening to music."

"About Wordsworth," said Mercy. "Parson Dorrance said such a beautiful
thing about him. It was like music, like far off music," and she repeated
it to Stephen. "I wonder if I shall ever reach that cathedral," she added.

"Well, I've never reached it," said Stephen, "and I'm a good deal older
than you. I think two thirds of Wordsworth's poetry is imbecile,
absolutely imbecile."

Mercy was too much under the spell of Parson Dorrance's recent words to
sympathize in this; but she had already learned to avoid dissent from
Stephen's opinions, and she made no reply. They were sitting on the edge
of a great fissure in the mountain. Some terrible convulsion must have
shaken the huge mass to its centre, to have made such a rift. At the
bottom ran a stream, looking from this height like little more than a
silver thread. Shrubs and low flowering things were waving all the way
down the sides of the abyss, as if nature had done her best to fill up the
ugly wound. Many feet below them, on a projecting rock, waved one little
white blossom, so fragile it seemed as if each swaying motion in the
breeze must sever it from the stem.

"Oh, see the dainty, brave little thing!" exclaimed Mercy. "It looks as if