d
chains garnishing nature's emerald vestments.

The youthful couple stood wrapt in silence for several minutes, viewing
the varied landscape. To Virgie the scene was familiar as an oft-repeated
tale, and yet she was never weary of it. To her companion it was one of
the loveliest views that he had ever gazed upon, even though he had
visited many lands and climbed many a mountain.

"It is grand!" said Mr. Heath, at last.

"It is grand!" echoed Virgie, drawing in a deep breath of pure air, and
sweeping a delighted glance over all the fair scene.

"I thank you very much for bringing me here," her companion continued. "I
would hardly have believed there could be such an exquisite view in this
region; my disagreeable ride, when I came here before, rather prejudiced
me against the locality. Do you come here often?"

"I used to, before papa's health failed him," Virgie answered, with a
regretful sigh, as she remembered how little her father had been able to
go about of late. "We used to come here almost every Sabbath in fine
weather, with our books and papers, and spend half the day--it is all the
church we have had--and I shall always love the spot."

"No doubt you do, and yet----"

Virgie looked up inquiringly as he paused abruptly.

"I was thinking," he continued, in reply to her glance, "that this
mountain must be a wild and lonely place for one like you to spend your
life in."

"Yes, it is lonely," the young girl responded, with a wistful gleam in her
violent eyes.

"Have you lived here long, Miss Abbot?"

"Five years--a little more."

"So long? Surely you cannot have had much congenial society," Mr. Heath
remarked, as he contemplated with no favoring eye the rude hamlet far
below them on their right.

"None, save my father."

"And have you never been lonely, and yearned for youthful companionship?"

"Oh, yes, often," and the bright tears sprang quickly into Virgie's blue
eyes, as she thought of the nights she had wept herself to sleep from
sheer homesickness and a feeling of utter desolation. "But," she continued
more brightly, and winking rapidly to keep the tell-tale drops from
falling. "I can bear loneliness, or almost anything else, for my father's
sake."

"Poor child! brave little woman!" thought the man by her side, "it must
have been very much like being buried alive, and she has borne it like a
heroine; but she will not have to endure it much longer 'for her father.'
I wonder what will become