tely,
though far beneath her, with my back reposing against the rock, and my
eyes apparently fixed on hers.

"Filled with a variety of opposite sentiments, among which unfeigned
alarm was predominant, she had instantaneously removed her head; and,
closing the aperture as noiselessly as possible, returned to the
moss-covered seat on which I had first surprised her; where, while she
applied dressings of herbs to the wound of her favourite, she suffered
her mind to ruminate on the singularity of the appearance of a man so
immediately in the vicinity of their retreat. The supposed
impracticability of the ascent I had accomplished, satisfied, even
while (as she admitted) it disappointed her. I must of necessity
retrace my way over the dangerous ridge. Great, therefore, was her
surprise, when, after having been attracted by the rustling noise of
the bushes over the aperture, she presently saw the figure of the same
hunter emerge from the abyss it overhung. Terror had winged her flight;
but it was terror mingled with a delicious emotion entirely new to her.
It was that emotion, momentarily increasing in power, that induced her
to pause, look back, hesitate in her course, and finally be won, by my
supplicating manner, to return and bless me with her presence.

"Two long and delicious hours," pursued Wacousta, after another painful
pause of some moments, "did we pass in this manner; exchanging thought,
and speech, and heart, as if the term of our acquaintance had been
coeval with the first dawn of our intellectual life; when suddenly a
small silver toned bell was heard from the direction of the house, hid
from the spot--on which we sat by the luxuriant foliage of an
intervening laburnum. This sound seemed to dissipate the dreamy calm
that had wrapped the soul of your mother into forgetfulness. She
started suddenly up, and bade me, if I loved her, begone; as that bell
announced her required attendance on her father, who, now awakened from
the mid-day slumber in which he ever indulged, was about to take his
accustomed walk around the grounds; which was little else, in fact,
than a close inspection of the walls of his natural castle. I rose to
obey her; our eyes met, and she threw herself into my extended arms. We
whispered anew our vows of eternal love. She called me her husband, and
I pronounced the endearing name of wife. A burning kiss sealed the
compact; and, on her archly observing that the sleep of her father
continued abo