Eyllen and her father in the mountains, much to the girl's satisfaction.

Her mind was now relieved. Work upon her baskets was again taken up, and
perseveringly done. Michaelovitz, with walking stick in hand, tramped
among the hills alone often, considering it the affair of no one that a
pick and shovel did honest duty in his hands during the day, and lay
secreted beneath the rocks near the little spring when he returned to
his cabin at night-fall. If his capacious coat pockets contained bread
slices in the morning, it was empty by evening, and his hands full of
blossoms then quickly pacified the children he met in the village.

At times Eyllen accompanied her father. Then, at his direction, by the
use of her mysterious instinct for minerals, she could trace still
further the treasure-filled ledges from the spring or ore shute where
her initial discovery had been made. By this means, several hundred feet
of gold-bearing ledges were located and staked by the girl and her
father, whose active labor in the open air, along with a brightened
future and more encouraging life prospects, soon caused the man to grow
strong and well again. Shismakoff and Eyllen became more fond of each
other day by day, until at last it was beyond his patience to endure
uncertainty longer, and he told her of his great love, begging for a
response in the form of a promise of marriage. To this the girl replied
as he desired, taking no note of his reference to a lack of exchequer,
and that he must go away from the islands in order to make money more
rapidly.

A few days afterwards, Michaelovitz invited the young man to join
himself and daughter in a ramble to the hills. Eyllen thought it was no
harm to give the whales and fishes one day more of freedom, she said,
and his boat needed caulking. She insisted that the boat must be made
entirely seaworthy, now that it must carry her future husband; and she
could not endure the thought of his life being in danger.

Upon reaching the vicinity of the spring in the ledges, Michaelovitz
proposed that they rest for a little and listen to a story which Eyllen
had to relate to them, but (with a woman's usual perverseness) when they
were comfortably seated upon the grass she refused to begin it. Would
she finish if her father began it? they asked.

No, she would not even promise to finish. If her father wished the story
to be told, then he must tell it, she declared between laughing and
blushing.

The old m