f a mile further on, began
to slope gradually towards the river, on whose banks, seen from that
distance, the town appeared to have been scattered irregularly or thrown
together hastily, as if cast ashore by some overflow--the Cosmopolitan
Hotel drifting into the Baptist church, and dragging in its tail
of wreckage two saloons and a blacksmith's shop; while the County
Court-house was stranded in solitary grandeur in a waste of gravel half
a mile away. The intervening flat was still gashed and furrowed by the
remorseless engines of earlier gold-seekers.

Mr. Ford was in little sympathy with this unsuccessful record of
frontier endeavor--the fortune HE had sought did not seem to lie in that
direction--and his eye glanced quickly beyond it to the pine-crested
hills across the river, whose primeval security was so near and yet so
inviolable, or back again to the trail he was pursuing along the ridge.
The latter prospect still retained its semi-savage character in spite
of the occasional suburban cottages of residents, and the few outlying
farms or ranches of the locality. The grounds of the cottages were yet
uncleared of underbrush; bear and catamount still prowled around the
rude fences of the ranches; the late alleged experience of the infant
Snyder was by no means improbable or unprecedented.

A light breeze was seeking the heated flat and river, and thrilling the
leaves around him with the strong vitality of the forest. The vibrating
cross-lights and tremulous chequers of shade cast by the stirred foliage
seemed to weave a fantastic net around him as he walked. The quaint
odors of certain woodland herbs known to his scholars, and religiously
kept in their desks, or left like votive offerings on the threshold of
the school-house, recalled all the primitive simplicity and delicious
wildness of the little temple he had left. Even in the mischievous
glances of evasive squirrels and the moist eyes of the contemplative
rabbits there were faint suggestions of some of his own truants. The
woods were trembling with gentle memories of the independence he had
always known here--of that sweet and grave retreat now so ridiculously
invaded.

He began to hesitate, with one of those revulsions of sentiment
characteristic of his nature: Why should he bother himself about
this girl after all? Why not make up his mind to accept her as
his predecessor had done? Why was it necessary for him to find her
inconsistent with his ideas of duty