the boat; he had doubtless forgotten its existence.

Mabel held her breath, the color left her lips and she grasped the oars
with each hand, till the blood was strained back from her fingers,
leaving them white as marble.

"Oh, not that! not that! I can endure anything but that! God help me! O
my God, help me! if this is added to the rest, I cannot live."

Drops of perspiration sprang to her temples as she spoke. Unconsciously
she expended the first strength of her anguish on the oars, and the boat
shot like a mad thing into the rapids which swept round a projection of
rocks, and like some tormented spirit, she was borne away from the sight
that had wounded her.

There was danger now. The rush of the current, tortured by hidden rocks,
sent the little craft onward, as if it had been a dead leaf cast into
the eddy. Mabel liked the danger and the tumult. The rising wind blew in
her face. The waters sparkled and dashed around her. The frail oars bent
and quivered in her hands. It was something to brave and fight against;
but for this scope of action the new anguish that had swept through the
soul of that woman must have smothered her.

On the little boat went, dancing and leaping down the current, recoiling
with a quiver from the hidden rocks which it touched more than once, but
springing vigorously back to its flight, like a bird upon the wing.

"Oh, if this be so, let me die now. Why will it not strike? How came
they to make the boat so light and yet so strong? It is true! It is
true! I feel it in every throb of my pulse. After this, the life that I
thought so dreary, will be a lost paradise, to which, plead as I may,
there is no going back. I will know, God help me, but I must know if
this is a wild suspicion, or a miserable, miserable reality!"

These words bespoke the concentration of some resolves. She grasped her
oars more firmly, and with a sharp glance around, put her boat upon its
course. It shot through hidden rocks; it cut across the eddies
recklessly as before, but all the time a single course was pursued. At
last the little craft entered the mouth of a mountain stream that came
sparkling down a pretty hemlock hollow in the hills. The hollow was
dusky with coming night, but the tree-tops were still brightened by a
red tinge from the sunset, and there was light enough to find a footpath
which wound upward along the margin of the brook.

CHAPTER VI.

THE LITTLE HOUSE ON THE HILL.

Mabel left he