walked away. "I
understand you, never doubt that. Agnes is beautiful, and keen enough
for a dozen such as you. I thought it would work!"

Mrs. Harrington made the best of her way down the footpath which she had
threaded, though the hollow was filled with gloom, and the whippowil
called mournfully after her as she went.

Her boat lay where she had left it in the mouth of the creek. As she
stepped into it a cry broke from her lips, and turning, she looked
wildly up the hollow. A woman sprang over the boat as she stooped for
the oars, and with a single leap cleared the bank, landing with a bound
in the footpath above her.

One sharp glance she cast behind, then darted away as if eager to bury
herself in the hemlock gloom.

The leap had been so sudden and the whole progress so rapid, that Mabel
scarcely saw the woman, but she remembered after, that her dress was
dusky red, and that a velvet cloak swept from her shoulders downward to
the ground, half torn from her person in its abrupt movements. As she
stood lost in amazement at this singular apparition, Mabel fancied that
she heard the dip of oars, and could detect the dim outline of a boat
making up the river.

She sat down mute, and troubled, looking after what seemed at best a
floating shadow; the night had darkened rapidly, and instead of the new
moon which should have silvered the sky, came billows of black, angry
clouds, in which the thunder began to roll and mutter hoarse threats of
a storm. Frightened by the brooding tempest, Mabel pushed her boat out
from the shore, and began to row vigorously homeward; but she had
scarcely got into deep water when the clouds became black as midnight;
the winds rose furiously, lashing the waters and raging fiercely through
the tree tops, while burst after burst of thunder broke over the hills.
She could only see her course clearly when flashes of lightning shot at
intervals through the trees, and broke in gleams of scattered fire among
the waves, now dashing and leaping angrily around her.

Mabel was excited out of her anxieties by this turmoil. There was
something in the force and suddenness of the storm that aroused all her
courage. The vexed trees were bent and torn by the winds. The river was
lashed into a sea of foam, over which her frail boat leaped and
quivered like a living thing; but she sat steady in the midst, pale and
firm, taking advantage of each gleam of lightning to fix her course, and
facing the storm with a