Embarking in the
sloop, he was soon alongside the Orion. The accommodation-steps were
placed over the side for him, and he ascended to the deck.

"I am glad to see you, Leopold," said Mr. Hamilton, extending his hand
to the boatman.

"Thank you sir; we are all glad to see you and your family here again,"
replied Leopold, as he glanced towards the quarter-deck in search of
Rosabel. "Are Mrs. Hamilton and your daughter on board?"

"Yes, both of them; but I have a smaller party than I had last year."

At this moment Leopold saw Rosabel emerging from the companion-way. His
brown face flushed as he approached her, and she was as rosy as a
country girl when she offered him her little gloved hand, which he
gratefully clasped in his great paw.

"I am _very_ glad to see you again, Miss Hamilton," said Leopold; and
certainly he never uttered truer words in his life.

"And I am delighted to see you again, Leopold," she replied gazing
earnestly into his handsome brown face, and then measuring with her eye
his form from head to foot. "How tall and large you have grown!"

We are inclined to believe, from the looks she bestowed upon him, that
she fully indorsed the opinion of the young ladies of the academy.
Rosabel was taller, more mature, and even more beautiful than when he
had seen her last. She was dressed to go on shore; but as soon as she
saw Leopold and the Rosabel, a new idea seemed to take possession of her
mind.

"I want to go to High Rock this minute!" exclaimed the fair girl. "I
have been thinking about the place every day since I was here last year;
and I want to go there before I land at Rockhaven."

Her father objected, her mother objected, and the grim old skipper of
the Orion declared there would be a shower and a squall, if not a
tempest, before night. But Rosabel, though a very good girl in the main,
was just a little wilful at times. She insisted, and Leopold was engaged
to convey her to the romantic region. He was seventeen and she was
fifteen; and no young fellow was ever happier than he was as he took
his place at the helm with Rosabel opposite him in the standing-room.

No other member of the party was willing to join her in the excursion,
for Belle Peterson and Charley Redmond were not passengers in the yacht
this time. If Leopold had been a young New Yorker, perhaps her father
and mother would have objected to her going alone with him. As it was,
they regarded him, in some sense, as a servant, an