ing
that even Louis had not done for her, and her heart throbbed with joy
and exultation in anticipation of the offering she could make.

With a bright tin bucket, that shone like burnished silver in the
sunbeams, swinging on her arm, she stole out of the back door, and ran
down a narrow lane, till she came to an open field, where the young corn
was waving its silken tassels, and potato vines frolicking at its feet.
The long, shining leaves of the young corn threw off the sunlight like
polished steel, and Helen thought she had never seen anything so
beautiful in all her life. She stopped and pulled off the soft, tender,
green silken tassels, hanging them over her ears, and twisting some in
her hair, as if she were a mermaid, her "sea-green ringlets braiding."
Then springing from hillock to hillock, she reached the end of the
field, and jumped over a fence that skirted a meadow, along which a
clear, blue stream glided like an azure serpent in glittering coils,
under the shade of innumerable hickory trees. Helen became so enchanted
with the beauty of the landscape, that she forgot her mother and the
strawberries, forgot there were such things as night and darkness in the
universe. Taking off her shoes and tying them to the handle of her
bucket, she went down to the edge of the stream, and dipping her feet in
the cool water, waded along close to the bank, and the little wavelets
curled round her ankles as if they loved to play with anything so smooth
and white. Then she saw bright specks of mica shining on the sand, and
she sprang out of the water to gather them, wondering if pearls and
diamonds ever looked half so beautiful.

"How I wish strawberries grew under water," cried Helen, suddenly
recollecting her filial mission. "How I wish they did not grow under the
long grass!"

The light faded from her face, and the dimness of fear came over it. She
had an unutterable dread of snakes, for they were the _heroes_ of some
of Miss Thusa's awful legends, and she knew they lurked in the long
grass, and were said to be especially fond of strawberries. Strange, in
her eager desire to do something for her mother, she had forgotten the
ambushed foe she most dreaded by day--now she wondered she had dared to
think of coming.

"I will go back," thought she; "I dare not jump over that fence and wade
about in grass as high as my head."

"You must do all you can for your mother," echoed in clear, silver
accents in her memory; "Louis