gramme for the
day. She intended to drive over to the county town, and Anne was to go
with her six miles of the distance, and be left at a certain glen, where
there was a country saw-mill. They had been there together several
times, and had made acquaintance with the saw-miller, his wife, and his
brood of white-headed children. The object of the present visit was a
certain fern--the Camptosorus, or walking-leaf--which Miss Vanhorn had
recently learned grew there, or at least had grown there within the
memory of living botanists. That was enough. Anne was to search for the
plant unflinchingly (the presence of the mill family being a sufficient
protection) throughout the entire day, and be in waiting at the
main-road crossing at sunset, when her grandaunt's carriage would stop
on its return home. In order that there might be no mistake as to the
time, she was allowed to wear one of Miss Vanhorn's watches. There were
fourteen of them, all heirlooms, all either wildly too fast in their
motions or hopelessly too slow, so that the gift was an embarrassing
one. Anne knew that if she relied upon the one intrusted to her care,
she would be obliged to spend about three hours at the crossing to allow
for the variations in one direction or the other which might erratically
attack it during the day. But her hope lay in the saw-miller's
bright-faced little Yankee clock. At their early breakfast she prepared
a lunch for herself in a small basket, and before Caryl's had fairly
awakened, the old coupe rolled away from the door, bearing aunt and
niece into the green country. When they reached the wooded hills at the
end of the six miles, Anne descended with her basket, her digging
trowel, and her tin plant case. She was to go over every inch of the
saw-miller's ravine, and find that fern, living or dead. Miss Vanhorn
said this, and she meant the plant; but it sounded as if she meant Anne.
With renewed warnings as to care and diligence, she drove on, and Anne
was left alone. It was ten o'clock, and a breathless August day. She
hastened up the little path toward the saw-mill, glad to enter the wood
and escape the heat of the sun. She now walked more slowly, and looked
right and left for the fern; it was not there, probably, so near the
light, but she had conscientiously determined to lose no inch of the
allotted ground. Owing to this slow search, half an hour had passed when
she reached the mill. She had perceived for some time that it was n