a rehearsal at seven o'clock, and we have no time to lose,"
said Mrs. Sol significantly.

"I forgot to say," said the "Marysville Pet" timidly, glancing at Mrs.
Sol, "that Mr. Rand says he will bring his brother on Wednesday night,
and wants four seats in front, so as not to be crowded."

Sol shook the young man's hand warmly. "You'll not regret it, sir: it's
a surprising, a remarkable performance."

"I'd like to go a piece down the mountain with you," said Rand, with
evident sincerity, looking at Miss Euphemia; "but Ruth isn't here yet,
and we make a rule never to leave the place alone. I'll show you the
slide: it's the quickest way to go down. If you meet any one who looks
like me, and talks like me, call him 'Ruth,' and tell him I'm waitin'
for him yer."

Miss Phemia, the last to go, standing on the verge of the declivity,
here remarked, with a dangerous smile, that, if she met any one who
bore that resemblance, she might be tempted to keep him with her,--a
playfulness that brought the ready color to Rand's cheek. When she
added to this the greater audacity of kissing her hand to him, the
young hermit actually turned away in sheer embarrassment. When he looked
around again, she was gone, and for the first time in his experience the
mountain seemed barren and lonely.

The too sympathetic reader who would rashly deduce from this any newly
awakened sentiment in the virgin heart of Rand would quite misapprehend
that peculiar young man. That singular mixture of boyish inexperience
and mature doubt and disbelief, which was partly the result of his
temperament, and partly of his cloistered life on the mountain, made him
regard his late companions, now that they were gone, and his intimacy
with them, with remorseful distrust. The mountain was barren and lonely,
because it was no longer HIS. It had become a part of the great world,
which four years ago he and his brother had put aside, and in which, as
two self-devoted men, they walked alone. More than that, he believed
he had acquired some understanding of the temptations that assailed
his brother, and the poor little vanities of the "Marysville Pet" were
transformed into the blandishments of a Circe. Rand, who would have
succumbed to a wicked, superior woman, believed he was a saint in
withstanding the foolish weakness of a simple one.

He did not resume his work that day. He paced the mountain, anxiously
awaiting his brother's return, and eager to relate his exper