d they stopped at our gate, and I heard George
Hammond's voice calling me. The blood rushed to my forehead. Had I been
alone, I would not have heard; but my mother was in the room, and I had
no excuse for not going forward. He leaned from his horse and shook
hands cordially, while, at the same time, he said,--

"I have brought Miss Worthington to see you, Janet. She has heard so
much of your kindness to me, and of your courage last spring, that she
was anxious to know you.

"This is Janet Rainsford, Amy," he continued, turning to her.

The lovely, bright young face was bent towards me, the tiny hand
stretched out to mine, and I heard a gentle voice say,--

"Mr. Hammond has told me so much of you, Janet, (I may call you Janet,
may I not?) that I was determined to come and see you. I hope we shall
know each other."

A great fear seized me then,--a fear which seemed to clutch my heart and
stop its beatings, leaving me without any power of reply. I only
stammered a few words, and Mr. Hammond, pitying what he thought my
bashfulness, rode on with a nod of farewell and some words, I could not
take in their sense, which seemed to be requests that I would teach Miss
Worthington all that I knew of the woods and the country.

I sat down with a stunned feeling, dizzied with the knowledge that
seemed to blaze upon me with that horrid fear. Yes, I knew now what it
all meant,--the happiness, the loneliness of the past weeks, the
shrinking bashfulness of yesterday morning, and the chill that fell upon
me when I first saw the stranger in the boat.

I loved George Hammond,--I, the country-girl, without one beauty, one
accomplishment, so ignorant, so beneath him. I had been fool enough to
fling away my heart,--and now, now that it was gone from me, there came
this terrible fear. What was this young girl to him? Were my intuitions
right? Did he love her? Would she take him away from me? take away even
that poor friendship which was all I asked?

That night,--I cannot tell of it,--the rapid, wearying walk from side to
side of my little garret, the despairing flinging myself on the bed, the
restlessness that would bring me to my feet again, the pressing my hot
face against the cool window-pane, the convulsive sobs with which the
struggle ended, the heavy, unrefreshing sleep that came at last, and the
dull wakening in the morning, when nothing seemed left about my heart
but a dead weight of insensibility. But with the brightening hour